My trip to Royal & Derngate theatre last week was interesting, if not unalloyed joy. I saw Federico García Lorca's Blood Wedding, which was the second production in the theatre's Festival of Chaos. The production used the same cast as The Bacchae and played up the drama's similarities to Greek tragedy with a chorus, violence in the wilderness, female control etc.
I'm glad I went, but it was patchy–in the word's of the friend who went with me "over-produced". The attempts to give the play a contemporary setting and the use of northern accents jarred. Maybe they were intended to demonstrate the play's relevance today, but they weren't necessary. Were they an attempt to create illusion or anti-illusion? Some of the things that I felt didn't quite work might have been due to the play itself, rather than the production.
Even with its faults, I'm glad I went to see it. Had the production been flawless, I doubt it would have given my friend and I half as much to discuss afterwards, not only about how else it could have been done, but about the themes (feud, revenge and love among them), the poetic language and the play's relevance. I wouldn't have felt a need to read the play to resolve some of the issues.
There is a saying along the lines that it's the rose's imperfections that make it beautiful. It was Blood Wedding's flaws that made it worth seeing.
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